Will You Use ShareThis for Social Media Analytics?

I received an email this week that ShareThis, a social media sharing widget, is rolling out two new aspects of their standard sharing functions, Social Reach and Audience Index, to increase users’ insight into the value and reach of their shared content.

What’s New with ShareThis?

Social Reach is the combination of the ShareThis buttons you may already know with counters. The new buttons display numbers that measure content based on impact (sharing, plus inbound social traffic), not just outbound sharing.

Audience Index is meant to help users understand and compare their social audience against others who influence, respond and engage on the Web. You’ll be able to see the type of people who visit your site and compare your content to other similar sites, and then use the data to improve the user experience.

We’re excited about the possibilities Social Reach and Audience Index open up for our publishers – both for editors who are trying to make quick content decisions and for product and advertising teams who are looking to validate and better define their social audiences.

The new buttons look something like this:

What Does It Mean for You?

We all know that a huge part of using social networking as a business marketing tool effectively relies on audience engagement. Whether or not you use ShareThis, this addition of analytics means that it’s becoming easier for everyday users of social media to really get a handle on the value and usefulness of the content they are sharing. Once we know that, we can make smart decisions about what we should be sharing and with whom.

Personally, I haven’t used my ShareThis account since I moved my blog from TypePad to WordPress earlier this year, but I thought this was a very interesting addition to a service that has been around along time. They also rolled out a newly enhanced ShareThis WordPress plugin, which I plan to check out.

I am all for learning more about what works and what doesn’t with how I use social media, especially if it will help me save time and target my content to those who really want it.

What do you think of the new analytics provided by ShareThis? How do you currently measure the impact of your shared content?